


Stronger Than Curses

by Serenade



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale), Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Crossover, Dreamsharing, Fairy Tale Curses, Falling In Love, M/M, Male!Sleeping Beauty, Male!Snow White
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenade/pseuds/Serenade
Summary: Snow White and Briar Rose meet once upon a dream.
Relationships: Sleeping Beauty/Snow White
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20
Collections: Rule 63 Exchange 2020





	Stronger Than Curses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inquisitor_tohru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitor_tohru/gifts).



Briar knew there was someone new in the woods. The birds sang it, the trees whispered it, and the earth under his feet shivered with it. When he closed his eyes, he could sense the direction of the newcomer, sure as the arrow of a compass.

He leapt lightly from branch to branch, gliding through the canopy, barely rustling the leaves. The wind would carry him and never let him fall. He scanned the forest floor for any flicker of movement. There.

The stranger moved like a shadow through the shadows of the woods, pale as a ghost. When he looked up at Briar, Briar froze in his tracks.

"Why are you following me?" he said. His voice was light. A young man. Same as Briar. His profile, half in shadow, was classically beautiful. Like a marble statue of an angel. His clothes were unadorned, but exceptionally well made: crisp linen shirt, soft doeskin breeches, and fine leather boots.

"I wanted to see who you were. I haven't met anyone else in these woods for a long time." Briar slipped to the ground, offering his hand. "My name is Briar."

The man stepped forward, out of the shadows. "My name is Snow." A nickname? He was pale enough for that, although his hair was dark as ebony, and his lips were red as blood. Briar tried not to stare. For the first time, he understood what people meant by a face as handsome as sin.

Snow gazed back at Briar, looking him up and down, and took his offered hand. "Are you the master of this realm?"

"What? No. I'm--" _I am its prisoner._ But he could not say that. "--I'm just another dreamer."

"This is a dream?" Snow said, in a soft voice.

"What else?" Their hands were still joined. Snow might not have noticed, but Briar certainly did. "You are in my dream, and I am in yours."

"I thought this was the afterlife. But you don't look like any devil I ever saw."

Not unless that devil had tawny gold hair, freckled cheeks, and sunkissed limbs. "Why do you think you would end up in hell?"

Snow let his hand fall. "Some people think I'm cursed."

That sounded like a long story. "Do you want to come with me, to somewhere more comfortable?"

Snow raised an eyebrow. Briar flushed. He hadn't meant it to sound like a come hither. Nor did dream bodies feel discomfort the way real bodies did. But some habits were hard to break. "My house is nearby. You are welcome there." Briar started climbing back up the tree. "Come on up. It's faster to fly."

Snow protested. "What? No."

"You can do anything you like. This is a dream."

Half doubting, half hoping, Snow followed. They stepped into the sky together. Briar smiled, but only on the outside.

_Anything you like. Except wake up._

#

Briar had dreamed up the house, out of moonbeams and wishes. He had chosen not to make it the same as the cottage in which he had grown up. It would have been too painful, to go home without his fairy godmothers there. This way, he could pretend he had moved to a different part of the woods, where he could go visit them anytime.

Maybe he could have dreamed up their likenesses, but that would have been even worse.

Snow followed Briar up the pebbled path into a green glade, where a cosy cottage stood, with a thatched roof and woodsmoke rising from the chimney. Twining around the windows were sweet briar roses, his namesake, their fragrance like apples.

"Very charming," Snow said, with a genuine smile.

They shared their stories. They were both princes: one knowing, one unknowing. Snow grew up in a castle and fled to the woods. Briar grew up in the woods and was brought to a castle. They might have been neighbours. Was it the same woods? It was always the same woods. But the paths that led in and out were not the same.

"An evil fairy put a spell on me," Briar said. "I touched a cursed spindle."

"A witch queen tried to kill me," Snow said. "I ate a poisoned apple."

"I'm sorry," Briar said. But part of him was glad. "There are no fairies or witches here. Just us."

#

There was no day or night in this place. The sun and moon stood in the sky at the same time, and the stars always shone. Briar took Snow to all his favourite haunts. They ate peaches and pears from orchards heavy with fruit. They rode horses through fields of amaranth and ambrosia. They swam in a lake that mirrored a rainbow sky.

"How do you know so much about this place?" Snow said, curiously. "How long have you been here?"

"I've lost track," Briar said, truthfully. There was a part of the woods where the trees were scored with tally marks, scratched with the tip of a knife. He had stopped keeping count, eventually, to spare their bark.

#

There were nightmares in the realm of dreams too. Empty ballrooms full of shattered glass. Barren gardens full of withered roses. Abandoned castles and deserted towers. The ghosts of forgotten tales.

"Others have passed through these woods before," Briar said. "I don't know where they go."

"Maybe they woke up. Or maybe--" Snow broke off, eyes shadowed. "What happens if we stay here forever?"

"We could find out," Briar said, lightly.

Snow did not smile back. "We could be dreaming our lives away, as the years keep passing us by."

"But isn't this enough? We have everything we need." Briar waved a hand. "We spent yesterday building a loft in the cottage. We spent today planting corn in the garden. There's so much to do!"

"You've been here so long, you've forgotten what else there is." Snow spoke with quiet sorrow. "The houses we build cannot shelter a single person. The gardens we plant cannot feed a single bird. We're playing at life. This isn't real."

Briar felt hollow as the wind. _I thought we were real._ "You want to go back."

"It's not that I want to be king," Snow said. "I could be a farmer, or a miner, or a woodcutter. But whatever I am, I want to make something good in the world. I want to do something that matters."

Briar looked away. He was being selfish. He was afraid of being alone inside the dream again. But he knew this much about fear: it made monsters. Like lonely ghosts that haunted the woods, luring unwary travellers to their doom. It was unfair to keep Snow trapped here just for company. He deserved to be free. He deserved a happily ever after.

#

Briar ascended the spiral stairs to the top of the tower. He had to be brave for someone else now. The room was full of dragons, but the dragons were in his mind. The machinery was just shadows on the wall. Wheels and rods and treads, and the flashing arm of the spindle.

His fairy godmothers had taught him something of magic. He knew this was not just a dream of a spindle. It was connected somehow to the real spindle, which was far more than a contraption of metal and wood. It was imbued with magic. Magic that comes at a cost.

He gripped the spindle by the shaft. A weapon. A tool. He pressed his finger against the point. A drop of blood seeped out. "Take me where I need to go."

The spindle began to move of its own accord, drawing out from his hand golden wisps of light. He staggered, dizzy, as though it were drinking the life from him. It spun the wisps of light into a golden thread, that grew and grew, until it formed a glowing circle in the air. A doorway.

Briar squared his shoulders and stepped through.

He found himself in the woods. They were different from the woods he knew. The leaves were darker, and the season was colder. He looked down at himself, translucent, shimmering with motes of light. He was here and not here. The spell would not last long. He had already used up almost all the magic to get here.

He ran through the woods, until he came to a raised bier in a clearing. Red and gold leaves covered a glass coffin. He brushed the leaves aside, and stared down into a familiar face. Beautiful as love, but still as death.

Briar took a deep breath. He tried to lift the lid of the coffin, but it was sealed shut. He tried to use the sharp point of the spindle to crack the glass, but it was too hard.

He remembered what his fairy godmothers had taught him. _The strongest kind of magic comes from the heart._ He breathed upon the glass, mist forming on its surface, and he drew the shape of a heart, and kissed it. _I love you. Please wake up._

The glass shattered into lines of spiderweb, into shards of ice, into flakes of snow. The man in the coffin opened his eyes. Briar returned his smile, even as he faded away into the light.

#

Briar dreamed again, but this time, it was a different dream.

A man stood before a maze of brambles and thorns. Beyond it were the turrets of a castle. He took an apple from his pocket, one half deep red, one half pure white. He broke the seeds out of the apple, and scattered them before the maze. Almost at once, they grew into shoots, then saplings, then mighty trees that stretched up towards the sky.

The man climbed the branches and leapt over the wall.

#

Briar woke to a kiss. He was lying in his own bed in the castle, the great four poster bed with silk hangings, the embroidered coverlets thick with dust. Snow leaned over him, eyes huge, trepidation giving way to relief. The scent of apple blossom came through the window.

Briar stared at him in dazed disbelief. "How are you here?"

"You saved me," Snow said. "If you found a way, I had to find a way too."

Sometimes spells worked their magic in unexpected ways. Sometimes they demanded the sacrifice of a heart. Sometimes they were waiting for the heart to make a sacrifice.

"We're alive," Briar said, in wonder. "We're awake."

Snow took his hand, with a warm smile. "Welcome back."


End file.
